Getting It Done

Sylvia Jensen, senior director EMEA marketing of Oracle Marketing Cloud, does an excellent presentation in this webinar on the three core areas of discipline that marketers can benefit from learning more about. The material is exactually what you would want – easy to understand without being simplistic, presented as a framework to allow for adaption to your situation, and full of actionable information.

The webinar was originally given on April 12, 2016.

You will learn:
How to develop a balanced content marketing plan to support your most significant business objectives
How to mine sources of inspiration to help create meaningful content
How to maximize existing content to create additional assets
Content calendar best practices
Ways to get to know your content comrades within your organization
The idea behind ‘content as data’ (and other must-have content marketing metrics)

Making the leap from being a WordPress developer in your spare time or for a boss to going freelance is daunting but exciting. If you’re like me, when you go freelance your focus will be on the work and not on the business side of things. But thinking like that could be a big mistake.

The big mistages are:

Mistake #1: Undercharging

Solution – Work out your rate following this simple process

Mistake #2: No Contract

Don’t work without it because you need to know and agree on what will be done, payment schedule (I suggest weekly invoicing and payment), and what happens if something go wrong

Mistake #3: No Project Brief

Summary of project timelines, details of exactly what will be done, each parties responsibilties, criteria for success, and who does what after project completed

Mistake #4: No Deposit

Some client may push back but stand firm as this is how you work, it is an industry practice, and is part of the contract they signed

How Much Work Can You Do?

The first part is easy and is the size of your team. In our example, we assume 3 people.

The second part represents the number of hour per week you can realistically work on planned stuff. Over time you get better at estimating how much extra work you have to do each week that is unplanned. You want this as low as possible but be realistic for your situation. In our example, we assume 30 hours of planned work and 10 hours of work that is dropped on us that we must get done this week.

The third part represent the focus or quality percentage. This means what else is going on that week – is there a holiday or event, or something else (Blue Jays’ playoff run) that could impact the team? In our example, we assume a 90% focus.

The capacity of the team is 3 people x 30 hours planned x 90% focus = 81 hours planned work.

Overtime we get better a estimating the time it takes to do our work. Now you can use your estimates to layout what you are working on, across all assignments. As your estimates of planned work improves, you can have more confidence showing how the next big, must do, unexpected task requires something else to slip. Something has to give.

You will likely experience push back on your estimates and approach but persevere – it will be well worth it.

Your Core Abilities: the special abilities you possess at the core of your being that separate you from others.

Your Credo: the values and belief system to which you subscribe, and/or a shared behaviour or code of ethics that you’re working within.

Now you know what to say, now Deliver like a litigator: You can create your argument, gathering all your facts and supporting evidence around the hidden agenda, which should be placed squarely at the centre of your “case.” Then, you can create an exciting tale where your audiences attains their deepest desire, not via business-speak, but with good old-fashioned storytelling to convincingly convey your pitch.

Kevin does a great job explaining the process of understanding why your customers buy from you and it is not because you twisted someone’s arm. People want to be understood, and with that understanding you can tap in “their heart’s desire.”